What is the plan when they say the car will negate searching for a parking spot? That it will just continue to circle the city block the whole time you're in a show or restaurant? Seems like at some point it will have to park itself, in a place where someone will not block it in. I can visualize coming out of a shop, summoning my car with my Android app, and it's blocked in by some double-parking delivery driver.

I have to agree with Tom's conclusion about the yearning to take the wheel yourself. A big part of the joy of driving is actually driving the car: maneuvering, switching lanes, speeding up. It's fun. I don't see the Google Car becoming anything more than a glorified scooter used for very short trips.

My fear for early models would be stuttering - identifying too many items as threats/obstacles in an effort to live up to safety hype and making for a bumpy ride during real road conditions.

The lack of manual navigation functions is somewhat of a concern, but not overwhelmingly. How will it deal with things like driveways, or new construction? Someone earlier mentioned requiring all cars to have self driving features added, but it could go beyond that - requiring all cities to update a database about road construction, maintenence, traffic stops/police dragnets, etc. How much bureaucratic overhead are we willing to accept to make texting in the car legal again? ;)

I find it fascinating that people worry about a driverless car handling extraordinary events. We need to remember that humans have, on average, a 0.7 s reflex. While that might sound good, 700 ms is an eon for a computer. I'm pretty sure the driverless car will react much faster than a person can.

In fact, I can imagine situations where the car will have adapted to circumstances before they have fully registered in the passenger's brain.

The only way this would be safe is if all vehicles are self driving. That is going to require government fiat to require it, can you say obamacar? Who is going to be held responsible when my obamacar runs over my neighbors 3 year old, running into the street to get their toy? Doesn't matter how good the sensor system is, you can't avoid the laws of physics.

I can see them becoming very attractive for ride sharing and for taxi services but I also see traditional taxi services fighting them all way to production. Ride sharing is becoming popular in urban areas where parking comes at a premium and most things are within walking distance but people want a car to use on weekends or longer trips. Since the cars are street legal and you won't be running people over on the sidewalks I can see them selling better than the Segway. They are a progression of a current technology that people are comfortable with so it's not quite the same. If the price was right I would buy one just for my commute so that I could work in the car or catch a nap on the way home.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.